Brands can soon start to use technology to read emotions and moods of people passing by their shops or outlets in the street.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In the future, (retail) brands will continuously register and cluster every aspect of behavior and identity of anonymous passants. Have you been here before? Have you looked for more than 1 seconds in the window, where did you look at and how did you respond? Have you been interacting with the brand before? Do we have a history together? As long as you haven’t identified yourself, you’ll stay anonymous. Naturally, brands could technically exchange personal details with each other, with the government or social media, but privacy laws will stop that. Nevertheless, they can build profile (unless you press or says: don’t remember me, forget my ‘personal cookie’ ).

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

Yesterday eve I attended a so-called 'Front End Developers' meetup. It was such a positive event of young people, it really made me happy that this new generation is shaping to world of tomorrow. Here is a bit more detail:

ING (Bank) hosted 300 Front-End developers in their Head Quarters near Amsterdam Bijlmer Arena. This sentence needs some explanation. A front-end developer designs and constructs that part of a complex website (think about Booking.com, Wehkamp.com or ING.com) that you can see. Is typically a male between 25-35 with a beard, but we had about 10% woman and some older guys as well, with or without beard.

Why was hosting ING this event? Well, all information dense companies, such as banks, are actually becoming IT-companies. More and more, a large part of their employees are actually IT people making the business more efficient and effective at the very same time. So ING needs people on one hand (so this a good way of getting in touch with them), and want their current employees to be proud at their company at the same time. For me, they succeeded in this event. They really took the opportunity to show the best of their selves. They registration proces was smooth, the security (hey, it's still a bank), was really good organised so we could enter the building with all of us without delay. Beers, good food and an ice cream during the break. A borrel after the talks with the opportunity to play around in the bar and play zone. How cool is that? Lots of employees guiding and helping us through the building. Compliments ING!!!

Why did I attend this event? Well, remember I spent a fortune on www.chatbots.org between 2008 and 2012? It now appears I was way to early. Chatbots are HOT these days. So... I've made a decision. I've made a decision to go back in the field. And in order to go back in the field, the website needs to be modernized. As I wrote before I totally dived in Angular 4, a modern front-end technology, and I'm gathering people who would like to help me. This was a certainly a good setting you learn their language, their behaviour, their interest. Soooo much has changed since I left IT back in 2003!.

Have you never been to such events? Do you still think most people speak Dutch in the Netherlands, and few excepted? Well, it is actually the other way around. These people come from all over Europe, have studied and worked in other countries. They speak English, that is their language. These Germans, Italians and Greek speak very good English. English is the de-factor new language in Europe. Why learn Dutch? You might go to Spain in a few years from now. Should you learn all languages? I totally understand this new generation!

And what really made me happy? Well, the atmosphere was so calm, so open, so co-operative. Speakers shared their creations from their heart, even working for competing companies. Some where speaking just wearing a shirt and a short. How cool is that? They were really one of us. Everyone could be standing there! And for this generation, this is the way to go. There is no other way to co-operate. And now they are developers, but they will unfold themselves as leaders, showing the way to the future for their generation and next generations.

If you watch the news today and you see the struggle of the world, please remember that there is very strong new generation coming up and they WILL do things different. When it would up to me, I would totally trusted this generation. So thankful that I could be in your community these hours last evening and probably in the future as well!

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

Those who've followed this website during the past years, will acknowledge this is a great break through in the advancement of AI conversation technology in our homes: Amazon introduces Echo, a home devices with a build in chatbot named Alexa, responding to your voice and taking all kinds of commands. User can ask for weather reports, set alarms, create to-do lists, and have it play music all via voice command. Alexa can also be used to shop at Amazon. And Alexa is funny!

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Gradually we’re getting used to an environment that responses to our voices. A next step is that the global brands will be included in Alexa. ‘Could you please pass me through to Billy (where Billy is the name of agent of Bol.com), allowing you to ask questions about your specific order at this brand. We’re getting there, step by step…

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

Team Nixie is developing the first wearable drone camera, which can be worn around your wrist. The team will be presenting their prototype for the Intel Make It Wearable Challenge Finale on November 3, 2014 in San Francisco.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

How cool is this! This is a cool new idea integrating media technology with robot technology. As from 2020, we’ll be surrounded by thousands of flying mini camera’s build into mini mini (size of a musquito) to medium (like this) to enormous (Zeppelin like) flying robots. They will be everywhere. Assisting us in (personal) transport, urgent deliveries in case of disasters, or as an extension of the fire department in case of bush fires. All step by step. This is just one step forward…

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion
• 2025-2050: Roboworld

The display beams 3-D objects a centimeter above or below,

Handheld holograms aren't here yet, but these little prototypes offer glimpse of what that future might look like. Researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs have made prototypes of screens that could display 3D images and videos in smartphones, smart watches, tablets and other mobile devices, they say.

In a conference call with reporters, Hewlett-Packard physicist David Fattal described what the tech looked like. "You actually see the object extruded one centimeter either in front of or underneath the display," he said. You can even tilt the display to any degree you like and see the displayed object from different angles.

Labs all around the world are working to make screens that can show 3D, so there's no guarantee that the first holographic smartphone will come from Hewlett-Packard, anyway. But we're excited to see this tech progress.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Although the virtual world is still ‘flat’, projected on flat ipad, flat smartphones and flat tv screens, it will be 3d soon. Just because our mind is programmed in this way.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

The world has its first bionic eye.

The Argus II works by substituting a small array of electrodes for the light-sensing cells that normally react to light by sending an electric signal toward the back of the retina. Those signals are relayed to the optic nerve behind the eye, and travel back along the nerve to the brain. In people with the genetic disease Retinitis pigmentosa, those light-sensing cells gradually stop working and this is resulting in total blindness.

In addition to the electrode array, which is implanted in the retina at the back of the eye, the Argus II system consists of a small video camera attached to a pair of eyeglasses and a visual processor the user carries around their waist. Data from the video camera is sent to the visual processor and then back to the glasses, where it is transmitted wirelessly to the embedded electrodes.

The system works for people with RP because the disease affects the light-sensing cells in the retina, but leaves the rest of the visual system--including the optic nerve, which carries visual signals from the retina to the brain--intact. The electrode array acts as a substitute for the eye's photoreceptors by directly stimulating the retina's remaining cells, which pass the signal on to the optic nerve.

Of course, an array of 60 electrodes cannot restore high-resolution vision--it's like watching TV on a screen with just 60 pixels--but it can supply enough information to allow people to move around without aid.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Gradually we will be able to replace every part of a human body. Interesting question remains: who are we when everything is replaced?

Smarter Objects from Fluid Interfaces on Vimeo.

How augmented reality can be used to turn traditional switches into a lot more interesting domotic systems.

Last summer, a research group of MIT scientists debuted a new video amplification algorithm that exaggerates slight changes in movement or color, like a magnifying glass for moving images. Since then, they've made the open-source code available and started allowing anyone to upload videos and see the effect for themselves. The New York Times got inside the lab to see what they project is doing in this video.

Read their full paper including the source-code here.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Computers will be able to understand human behavior in a better way than we do. They’ll sence any small motion, any small change in our behaviour. They’ll use the lessons learned in physiognomics. They will be the best possible communication partners, and applied as brand agents, virtual characters representing brands with these motion magnifying capabilities, it will revolutionize the world of marketing communication.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

Most gesture-control systems require some kind of external sensors that "see" you, with optical sensors or depth sensors or cameras. They're on the outside, measuring your movements the same way human eyes do. And that's fine, but a new wristband advertises itself as a system that's more internal--it's directly controlled by you.

You make gestures similar to the ones you'd use on an Apple trackpad, except in the air: you'd wave a couple fingers to rewind or pause a video, scroll through pages, that kind of thing. It's compatible with Windows and Mac OS X to start, but since it connects via Bluetooth, it could conceivably connect to just about any mobile device as well: smartphones, tablets, or even drones.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Now computer are getting additional input from humans: gestures in the air, instead of mouse and keyboard. The next step will be the recognition of human gestures, i.e. gestures we already use in our day 2 day lives, having conversations with chatbots like we would do with normal human beings. That will really feel natural.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

Researchers have created a lithium-ion battery that keeps on working when stretched to four times its initial length--and bounces back into shape once you let go.

In the future, stretchy batteries such as these could help power solar-energy generating clothes, tattoos that monitor your vital signs, robot skin that's sensitive to touch and other futuristic, flexible devices.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

And what about making roofs of these batteries? Any objects created by man could carry batteries, displays and cameras. Your whole house can be a display to! Camoflaging itself in the rainforest, charging itself by sun. Or an aircraft, constantly charging itself at heights. Or robotic humanoid skin to charge all its transistors and sensors.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

Touchscreens treat all fleshy finger pads alike: Most detect a simple change in electrical current or in sound or light waves regardless of who is swiping. Researchers at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, have built a touchscreen that can discriminate between users. Every person’s body has its own bone density, muscle mass, blood volume, and water content. The device, called Touché, sends a series of harmless currents through a user’s body. Physiological differences produce differences in the body’s impedance of that current. Touché measures this unique capacitive signature. Scientists could apply capacitive fingerprinting to any touchscreen, or to other ubiquitous objects, such as doorknobs and furniture, turning the world into an interactive device. Touché is still in development, and plans for commercialization, alas, are top secret.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

All brands will be able to recognize consumers and continue the dialog where they’ve left off the time. This begins with authentication technology and this is perfect step in this direction! Now, we’ll to touch a screen, soon, we’ll be recognized through our unique field around our bodies.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

We've all seen 3D sensors before. In the Microsoft Kinect, for instance. That sensor's design was licensed to Microsoft by +PrimeSense.

At CES this year, Robert Scoble visited Primesense to get a look at its latest 3D sensor. What is big about it? First of all, it's small. Small enough to fit into tablet PCs. Second of all, it's lower cost. Will sell for under $100. Third of all it's more accurate and higher resolution than the one in Kinect (it is so accurate it can tell how hard you are pressing on a surface).

Why is this world changing? Because nothing can track human behavior quite as well as a 3D sensor. Expect to see these start to appear everywhere. In cars. In games. In tablets and TVs. And more.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

ALL screens will be 3D. In transparent mode, we’ll be able to look through them, and notice, very naturally, that the perspective changes when we move our head, and when we rotate the screen just a little the perspective will change as well. In non-transparant mode, we’ll have a view on a virtual 3D world and we’ll notice, very naturally, that the perspective changes when we move our head, and when we rotate the screen just a little the perspective will change as well. and obviously we have mixed mode. That’s the essence of the media-completion trend: the virtual world will be as naturally as the real world.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

This LED grid created by students of the Delft University of Technology contains 66x28x28=76032 pixels. It contains animations of rotating flowers and more artitic experssions.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In the future, these grids will be unlimited detailed. Now 76,032 pixels seems a lot, but at that time we’ll easily have 76,032,000,000 pixels. The pixels will be so small that our human eye won’t be able to distinguish them from each other.

Applications will be countless. We’ll have conversations with other humans on a distance, or even interact with virtual humans. Prototyping, education, and brand interaction. Everything will change with technologies like these.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

This video shows the future vision of Corning, a New York based company based in specialty glass and ceramics. Very interesting! Below you'll also find 'the making of' which much more details and an explanation what's possible today, and what's not

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

It will take a while before this technology will be seen everywhere in our society. It will be revolutionary, certainly realizing we will also interact with intelligent yet virtual humans.

But again, it will be shifting in developing countries. The poorest countries in the world suddenly get access to these extreme reliable devices (no connectors, no keys, thus not sensitive for sand and maybe even not for water. It will change the level of education in the world. Forever.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

Although this is a 2006 video, it definitely shows the future of TV.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

All screens, including our BIG screens in our living rooms, will respond to EVERYTHING we do: where we point our fingers, how our whole body expresses an emotion and what we shout we walk along various screens. All our input will be added up, modeled and interpreted by brands, virtual entities on the other side of the screen,

This example might be funny but it absolute part of our future.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion